The Brookhaven leader., 1887-11-17

lHey OupnJ not tO 70, anu Inelr lnDelleCtS
have been overburdened and overstrained
and battered to pieces against Latin
grammars and algebras, and coming
forth into practical life they will hardly
rise 90 mediOcrity, and there is now
stuffing and examining system of educa-.
ton in the schools of our country that is
deathful to the teachers who have to en-
force it, and destructive to the children
who must submit to the process. You
find children at 8 and 10 years of age
with school lessons only appropriate for
children of 10. If children are kept in
school and studying from to 3 O'Clock,
no home study except music ought to be
required of them. Six hours of study is
enough for any child. The rest of the
day ought to be devoted to recreation
and pure fun. But you cannot begin
too early the moral culture of a child, or
on too complete a scale. You can look
back upon your own life and remember
what mighty impressions were made
upon you at 5 or years of age. Oh,
that child does not sit SO silent during
your conversation to be uninfluenced bv
it. You say he does not understand. AL
though much of your phraseology is be-
yond his grasp, he is gathering up from
your talk influences which will affect his
immortal destiny. From the question he
asks you long afterward you find he
understood all about what you were cay
ing. You think the child does not ap-
preciate that beautiful cloud, but its most
delicate lines are reflected into the very
depths of the youthful nature, and a
nf H4-ill fhn
shadow of that cloud in the tastes and
refinements developed. The song with
which you sang that child to sleep will
echo through all its life, and ring back
from the very arches of heaven. l think
that often the first seven years of q
child's life decides whether it shall be
irascible, waspish, rude, false, hypocrit-
ical, or gentle, truthful, frank, obedient,
honest and Christian. The present gen
erations of men will pass off very much
as they are now. Although the Cos
pei is offered them, the general rule is
that drunkards die drunkards, thieves
die thieves, libertines die libertines.
Therefore to the youth we turn. Before
they SOW wild oats get them to SOW
wheat and barley. You fill the bushel
be no room for husks. Glorious Alfred
Cookman was converted at 10 years of
age. AT Carlisle, Pa, during the pro-
gress of religious meeting in the Metho-
dist church. while In!ut wyr' llneeling
at the foot of the altar, this BOY knelt in
corner of the church all by himself and
said: Precious Saviour, thou art saw
ing others, o, wilt thou not save nle:'
A Presbyterian elder knelt beside him
and led him into the light. Enthroned
Alfred Cookman! Tell me from the
skies, were you converted too early? But
| cannot hear his answer. 1t is over
powered by the huzzas Of the tens of
thousands who were brought to God
through his ministry. Isaac Watts, the
great Christian poet. was converted at 9
years of age. Robert Hall, the great
Baptist evangelist. was converted at II
years of age. Jonathan Edwards, the
greatest of American lOgicians, was con-
verted at 7 years of age. a....
Oh for one generation of holy men and
women. Shall it be the next? Fathers
and mothers, you under God are to de-
eide whether from your families shall 60
forth towards, inebriates, counterfeiters,
blasphemers, and whether there shall be
those bearing your image and carrying
your name fostering in the low haunts of
vice, and floundering in dissipation, and
making the midnight Of their lives horrid
with long howl of ruin, or whether
from your family altars shall come the
Christians, the refonners, the teachers.
the ministers of Christ. the comforters of
the troubled, the healers of the sick, the
enacters of good laws, the founders of
charitable institutions, and a great many
who shall in the humber spheres of toll
and usefulness serve god and the best in
terests of the human race. .u... ....
You cannot as parents shirk the re-
sponsibility. God has charged you with
a mission, and all the thrones of heaven
are waiting to see whether you will do
your duty. We must not forget that it
is not SO much what we teach our chill
dren as what we are in their presence.
We wish them to be better than we are,
but the probability is that they will only
be reproductions of our own character.
German literature has much to say of
the ''specter of Brocken." Among those
mountains travellers in certain conditions
of the atmosphere see themselves copied
on a gigantic scale in the clouds. At
first the travellers do not realize that it is
themselves on larger scale. When they
lift hand or move the head this monster
specter does the same, and with such
enlargement of proportions that the scene
is most exciting, and thousands have gone
to that place Just to behold the specter
Of no lNoh g l1ok
Of our faults which we consider small
and insignificant, if we do not put an end
to them, will be copied on a larger scale
in the lives of our children, and perhaps
dilated and exaggerated into spectral
proportions. You need not go as far off
as the Brocken to see that process. The
first thing in Importance in the education
of our children is to make ourselves, by
the grace of God, fit examples to be
copied. The day will come when you
must confront that child, not in the
church pew on a calm Sabbath, but amid
the CONSERVATION of the rising dead, and
the flying heavens, and burning world.
From your side that son or daughter.
bone of your bone, heart of Your heart.
the fathers brow his brow, the mothers
eye his eye, shall go forth to an eternal
destiny. What will be your JOY
if at last you hear their feet in
the same golden highway and hear
their voices in the same rapturous song,
illustrations, while the eternal ages last,
of what a faithful parent could, under
God, accomplish. / was reading of
mother who. dying, had all her children
about her, and took each one of them by
ba hard nj acEal fbn,,, 10. ,,.oa+ har in,